I sat down over the weekend and got some painting done. Yay! I had started this portrait of my mother in black and white and messed with it.

I had the paint really heavy on her face at one point so I pressed a paper towel over it. It came out like a weird ghost.

That reminded me how much fun it really is to paint. I’ve got something else started which I hope to finish today. Here’s a sketch done on the first page of a new watercolor block which happens to be black.

And the same image filled in with some color.

All in all a pretty productive weekend. And still no sign of sun in Northern NJ.

Today was the beginning of the second week at the new office. I did a drawing of Keena and me. We are the front desk receptionists and we got along great from the minute we met.

Things are a little different than just having Howie aka Dr Wilson as a boss. They are a group and have a different protocol. I feel grateful at my age to have the opportunity to use my skills in a medical office at least for a bit longer. It’s a really nice new office too.

Down at the Jersey shore they used to have these inground trampoline places. My sister and I had never jumped on trampolines and we used to like going. I found a picture of me jumping with my sister in the foreground.

Here’s the photo probably taken by my father. We’ve been going through a lot of stuff and I continually find myself intrigued by old photos. I went through all my colored pencils and arranged them in color order in two containers; also sharpened them. Colored pencil on black paper is a fun way to draw.

Mourning? is
From of killed but spaces why? morning reply no what.
Where? more it when? tomorrow killed has and.
Black another questions wear gun color of sorrow and again just;
Shots unfilled.
Remain will the empty.

I wanted to acknowledge Las Vegas. The dVerse prompt to ignore grammatical rules seemed a good way to reflect our country’s continued loss of syntax. But when I went to write something it just seemed I had nothing more to say. A quick look through the MTM archives counted at least 13 previous posts related to gun violence. Remember the shootings in Kalamazoo in February 2016? That’s what the black grid above was done for.

The two faces above? Victims of Dylann Roof in 2015. And below, cops killed while sitting in their patrol car in NYC in 2014.

But wear. Gun of again another why? color more empty is sorrow remain.
Of killed killed;
From what and the just black spaces;
Has and will no it questions shots unfilled.
Mourning? reply.
Morning where? when? Tomorrow

Every day 88 people die by gun violence in the United States.

To make the poems above, I took what I had written for Kalamazoo, and plugged it into the Dada Poetry Generator. I did it about 15 times; all the results were pretty accurate as reflections of my jumbled feelings, and I chose two to use in this post. You can see the original poem here.

Jimmy Kimmel said everything I want to say and more in his monologue the other night.